Deciphering Monomon's Gibberish Script

So the lore tablets in the Archive are one of the biggest mysteries in all of Hollow Knight. On the surface, they don’t seem to make a lick of goddamn sense. But if we can channel our inner high school English class student, we can do a little “close reading” to try and figure out what it all means.

Now if you’ve ever read the popular nonfiction work of George Orwell entitled “1984”, then the syntax of these tablets will probably be familiar to you. The tablets don’t form complete sentences. Instead, we have to look at the keywords and the order in which they appear to try and decipher their meaning. There are also just seemly random words and letters that I think we should just completely ignore like ABA, EM, CH, O and THIR. But maybe if we rearrange these letters, it will form an anagram that will help us uncover more of Hollow Knight’s lore. Holy shit!

[X-Files Theme intesifies]

This first tablet is discussing the sealing of the Temple of the Black Egg, where the Hollow Knight can be found in the final game. 

-THIR-YOLK-ABA-ABSENCE-OUTER-SHELL-O-GATE-CONTAIN

For this first line, the use of the words “yolk” and “shell” point us to the Black Egg Temple. This temple is then used to “gate” the Hollow Knight so that it remains separated from the rest of the world.

LIGHT-EM-VESSEL-EM-EGG-EM-SEAL-THIR-WITHDRAW

The second line gives us an idea of the order of containment. The Radiance, or the Light, is sealed inside the Vessel, which is sealed inside the Temple of the Black Egg, which has a seal placed over it. 

EXTERIOR-O-SEAL-WITHIN-DREAMER-INTWIXT-ATWIXT

As for this third line, it is explaining that the seal over the exterior of the temple is hidden within the Dreamers, Herrah, Monomon and Lurien. “Intwixt” and “Atwist” must be some weird Australian slang Team Cherry decided to use, because here in America, they aren’t real words. I’m guessing they are variations of the word betwixt, which just means between. In other words, all of this is occurring between the realms of the physical world and the Dream world.

CONTAIN-LIGHT-THIR-DREAM-CH-ABA-UNGROWTH-CONTAIN-

Finally, this will lead to the containment of the Radiance, and the end to her “ungrowth”. The second lore tablet is describing the difference between the Pale King and the Radiance.

-KINGLIGHT-EM-GROWTH-INKIND-FLOW-ALLTHINK-ENFIELD

In this first line, it is explaining how the Pale King, or the “Kinglight” is responsible for growth and granting the bugs of Hallownest the ability to think freely. “Inkind” likely means the inclusion of different kinds, or in other words variety, since all of the bugs can think for themselves. Then there’s the word “Enfield”. My best guess for this word is that it is referencing a suburb in Adelaide, South Australia, the city that Team Cherry is based in. So is Team Cherry trying to tell us that Monomon is actually aware of the fact that she is in a video game? I mean, that seems like the cool hip thing for indie devs to do nowadays. 

Of course, the Shrine of Believers basically confirms that Hallownest was created by a group of beings from a different dimension, or in other words, by humans on Earth, so it’s really not that big of a stretch. But the more likely explanation for the use of the word Enfield in this tablet is that Team Cherry is just fucking with us once again. I mean, that would also explain the text on this tablet too.

OLDLIGHT-EM-ESSENCE-EM-DREAM-EM-UNGROWTH

The next line in Monomon’s poem tells us that the Radiance, or the “Oldlight”, who is tied to dreams and essence, leads to ungrowth. We can assume that by ungrowth, Monomon is talking about how the Radiance causes her subjects to lose their own thoughts, and become connected to her hivemind.

O-ENDTHINK-ABA-KINGLIGHT-CH-OLDLIGHT-THEMKIN-O-CH

This third line confuses me. The Radiance will likely be responsible for this endthink, but I’m unsure about what themkin is referring to. The moths are the kin of the Radiance, while the Vessels are the kin of the Pale King. Either way, I’m not sure what is being implied here.

THINKFLOW-ABA-DREAM-UNCONTAIN-THIR-UNGROWTH-ENDLIFE-

The last line is pretty straightforward though. If the Radiance’s powers are left uncontained, it will result in an end to life as the bugs of Hallownest know it. This final tablet is about the creation of the vessels.

-OF-ABSENCE-THIR-ABUNDANCE-SHELL-OUTER-O-INNER- 

This first line is saying that there is an abundance of outer shells that have absent innards.

PLACE-IN-ABSENCE-THIR-VOID-LIQUID-SUBSTANCE-O-

The next line says that void should be placed within the absences, or within the outer shell. At this point, I’d like to say that I think that the shell Monomon is referring to is the shell that Vessels wear on their heads. Some people call these things masks, but if you look at the Hollow Knight instruction manual, like I’m sure everybody did, it states that the Knight wears a shell, which has a strength represented in masks. Now, is it really that important of a distinction? Well, yeah! Everything is important in this game! Even this bitch! 

WEAVE-ABSENCE-INNER-O-SHELL-OUTER-THIR-MATER

The third line explains that the shells and the void should be weaved together.  Now there are two words in here that raise a couple of red flags. First, let’s talk about “Mater”. Mater is an old fashioned word for mother, so I’m guessing that Monomon is talking about the White Lady, since, in my opinion, she helped create the empty shells that would be used to create the Vessels. The word “weave” is also interesting, because in the game, there is a group of beings called the Weavers. Unfortunately, the Weavers seemed to have noped the fuck out of Hallownest before the game started, so we can’t really ask them or anything. We do know from Midwife that the weavers are capable of creating spells. Is it possible that the Weavers helped create the vessels? Well, the Vessels are already part Pale King, part White Lady, and part Void. And now we want to add the Weavers in too? Well, I guess...why the fuck not? Maybe Elder Bug was involved too. Maybe the Vessels are 2% Fungoon shit!

PEER-CH-VOID-VESSEL-ABSENCE-ALL-OUTER-CONTAIN-

As for this last line, it is basically saying that the Void of the Vessel is contained by the outer part, or the shell. I’m not quite sure what “peer is referring to. Maybe it is just saying that the Vessels are peers, or of equal status, or it could mean peer as in looking intently. Not quite sure, honestly.

Okay cool, so the three lore tablets in the Archive all pertain to the plan used to try and stop the Radiance. This means one of three things. Either the Pale King told Monomon about this plan, she found out about it on her own, or she actually helped the Pale King devise the plan. I think it’s safe to say she didn’t find out on her own. I mean, that’s a really specific plan. That’s like pissing into a water glass from atop the empire state building.

So maybe the Pale King told her the plan. This is possible, but why would he tell her the plan if all she had to do was go to sleep as a Dreamer? I mean, maybe she just wanted to know out of curiosity, or needed to be convinced. After all, she is pretty much dying for this whole thing.  But that’s a boring explanation, and I’m trying to make a lore video here that is long enough to make at least three more dick and shit jokes. So, let’s just say “no” to that theory.

But honestly, I do think there is a good case to make that Monomon was involved with the Pale King’s plan from the beginning. Why is that? Well, there’s one damning piece of evidence that supports this. The fucking jellyfish. Now in my first video, I asked a fair question about why jellyfish were in a game about bugs. The obvious answer to this question was that the jellyfish are merely Team Cherry’s way of pay homage to another famous game with jellyfish creatures; SpongeBob SquarePants: Revenge of the Flying Dutchman. But when I asked the question, I meant it from a lore perspective. Well, there is a lore explanation that has been around for a while, and it does make sense, even if it is kind of speculative. I do like it though because it fits in nicely with what we have talked about so far in the video. The jellyfish are Monomon’s artificial creations.

The Hunter posits a few theories as to what the jellyfish are, saying they might be the spirit of a dead ancestor, the brain of a larger creature, or some kind of egg. Well, these are all wrong, and are clearly a clever red herring by Team Cherry to mislead us as to the jellyfishes' true nature.

In all of their Dream Nail dialogue, these things keep mentioning Monomon. And the Hunter’s Journal entry for Uumuu claims that Uumuu is acting as a guardian for Monomon. And that there are strange and unnatural things lurking in the Fog Canyon. So it’s unlikely that these things have any origins stemming from nature. Now I know what you’re thinking. This might be a clever red herring by Team Cherry to mislead us as to the jellyfishes’ true nature. But that’s stupid. There’s no reason Team Cherry would ever do something like that.

Also, why is Monomon keeping these charged Lumaflies inside of a tank? Is it because electricity is an important component in the process of creating life? And just look at the structure that Monomon has in the heart of the Archive. It’s a giant test tube. Clearly this was used to create her unholy gelatinous abominations.

Okay, so let’s say that the jellyfish are indeed the results of Monomon’s Frankenstein-esc experiments. What does that have to do with Monomon helping the Pale King? Well, Monomon’s actions here seem pretty similar to how the Pale King was creating intelligent void Vessels and constructs. So it’s possible that Monomon actually did work with the Pale King to help conduct his experiments, since she was basically doing the exact same thing, animating matter. 

But it is hard to say, since we don’t really know how the jellyfish were actually created. The King poured the liquidy, goopy void it into a mold to create his constructs, while we have no idea how Monomon created the jellyfish children. Regardless, it works thematically, which I know sounds like a cop out, but that’s just because it is one.

And there you have it. The lore tablets in the Archive basically spell out the details of the Pale King’s plan to contain the Radiance. The three tablets reinforce our understanding of the lore, but for the most part, they don’t really add anything new to what we already know. The only thing mentioned in these tablets that sort of affects our view of the lore is the inclusion of the word “weave”. Overall, the most important thing about these tablets is what implications they have on Monomon’s involvement with the Pale King’s plan to save Hallownest.

Now if you haven’t seen my first Hollow Knight lore video, I highly recommend you check it out. It is a very informative video that covers a lot of Hollow Knight’s lore. If you have seen my video, I should tell you that it’s complete shit and full of inaccurate claims. In that video, I talked about how the Pale King approached the three Dreamers after they had already tried to lock away the Radiance inside of the Hollow Knight. Oh, how naive I was in my youth. Now that I am older and wiser, I think it’s more likely that the dreamers were involved early on, and that Monomon was especially involved from the beginning. I think a lot of this confusion over the Hollow Knight timeline will be cleared up in the upcoming Hornet DLC, since I’m like 93.5% sure that it’s a prequel, but until then, we’ll just have to work with the breadcrumbs that Team Cherry has left for us.